The Yakshas

The Liyue edition of the Sumeru scholar Masudi's ethnographic encyclopedia A Record of Lands Between Glaze and Rock, titled Glaze in a Casket, Moon Amid the Clouds. Because of its twisted, difficult style and deep, hard reading, booksellers and readers alike neglected it. The Yakshas: Guardians of the Adepti is one of its volumes, introducing the yakshas who once fought beside the Geo Archon.

In ancient Liyue, miasma and plague were common. Some say that in the earliest Archon wars the defeated were pinned under solid rock, rotted into soil, and returned to the circuit of heaven and earth's elemental meridians. Yet some souls, full of hate and unyielding, condensed into demons. When those demons rose in unrest, plague, ghosts, and strange monsters were born. They ruined the land, made fields waste, and ran riot in rivers and seas; the people suffered deeply. Such demons were in truth the leftover grudges of (defeated) Archons.

Rex Lapis summoned the yakshas to destroy these evils. Yakshas are Liyue's adeptal beasts—fierce and terrible by nature, warlike, and willing to kill in order to guard the rule of the Geo Lord. The mightiest five among them were: Fushe, Yingda, Fanan, Minu, and Golden-Winged Peng. These five followed Rex Lapis through many battles against demons, purged plague and miasma, and the world called them the "Yaksha Guardians."

The Yaksha Guardians protected the Geo Lord and put down calamities for many years. Yet though they possessed great power, they could not escape the bonds of karmic debt nor the pollution of leftover malice. Some fell into unspeakable rage and terror and went mad; some slew one another and died; some at last became demons themselves. After a thousand years of trials, of the five yakshas three died unnatural deaths, one vanished without trace, and many nameless others died or fled—only Golden-Winged Peng remains alive to this day.

Golden-Winged Peng is styled "King of Golden Wings," also called "Great Sage Conqueror of Demons." None know whence he came or where he finally went. Each spring night at the Lantern Rite, gazing at floating lights above Guyun Stone Forest, Liyue's people say: "That is the guardian yaksha hunting demons." Some hear a flute from deep in Dihua Marsh, search and find no player, and say: "That is the yaksha calling old friends home."

Thus those of great spiritual power must suffer great crushing pain. Having lost all kin and comrades, piled with sin and karmic debt, forever filled with hate that never rests, taking the grudges left from old days as enemies, they receive neither reward nor release—truly the suffering of hungry ghosts wandering emptiness, which ten thousand kalpas cannot end.